


What the Heart is Made Of

by TheColorBlue



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-06
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short canon AU piece. <i>Spock has heard the earth expression, to feel as if one's heart were made of stone.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Heart is Made Of

Sarek is dead.

Amanda had been living on the planet Vulcan for a little over the past three decades. During that time, she has adapted to the Vulcan customs of behavior and comportment, as befitting a wife of an ambassador and a member of the Vulcan council. Like the Vulcans, she has practiced meditation, and although insisting in her peculiar way to never deny her human emotions, she has cultivated a calm public face, a tranquil one.

Nonetheless, Vulcan has been destroyed, Sarek killed, and Amanda is crying. Spock stands at his mother's cot side, one hand on her shoulder, the other hanging stiffly at his side.

He has heard the earth expression, to feel as if one's heart were made of stone.

It is an illogical statement. Human hearts, as well as Vulcan ones, are made of fleshy tissue. It would be impossible for a body to function with an organ constructed of solid mineral matter.

Nonetheless. He is standing by his mother, his head clear and empty of any thoughts whatsoever, except for the logical considerations of the moment.

Vulcan has been destroyed.

Sarek is dead.

And Spock is standing by his grieving mother, hard and unmoving as a machine. Perhaps control over one’s emotions is what kept the Vulcan race from destroying itself, so many thousands of years past. But Spock has the sudden, wild thought—there is something wretched to an existence such as his. Something wretched and contemptible. Here he stands, a creature of logic, and unable to perform even the slightest act of comfort towards his mother. He finds himself incapable of telling her— _I miss father too_. Or, _I will avenge our planet and family if I need to choke the air from Nero’s lungs with my bare hands_. Or, _I am sorry I have never been able to express my love for you and father. I am sorry. I am so sorry_.

He feels as though that, if he were to speak he would break down weeping as well. Tears, he thinks abstractedly, are a strange phenomenon. The expression of grief is strange. There is something almost catching in watching as the tears sliding down his mother’s cheeks—

The thoughts pass briefly, before he has squashed them down again.

He embraces his mother clumsily (like an machine), before returning to the bridge.

\--

Kirk is sitting in the commander’s chair.

Kirk is demanding that they turn around to deal with the Romulans themselves.

Spock feels something seethe beneath his skin, under his iron-gripped control over his emotions. He knocks Kirk out with a nerve pinch to the neck and orders for him to be marooned on the closest planet with a Federation outpost.

Kirk is a ball of unleashed emotion, moving and wild and infecting. Spock cannot have the man present as a distraction.

Besides, he is almost certain that if he were to turn the USS Enterprise around to confront Nero and rescue Commander Pike—he is almost certain that, when he comes face to face with that damnable ship again, that damnable Romulan face—something inside of him is going to snap.

\--

Kirk is back.

Kirk has a look on his face—a look of such unconcern bordering on contempt for the situation that they are all in—Spock breathes in and out steadily, soft, even breaths—and asks Kirk, _calmly_ , how he managed to beam aboard that ship.

Kirk says instead, _your mother must be so proud to have you for a son. Commander of this ship. So cool and rational._

Spock says to the men who had brought Kirk in— _take him away—_

 _So proud to have a son like a rock—I bet you’re a real comfort to her right now, Commander Spock,_ Sir—

Spock lunges for Kirk.

\--

There is something contagious about the expression of emotion. Irrational as that might sound. Spock has watched his mother, and he watches Kirk, and he watches all the faces on the bridge of the USS Enterprise—and everything seems to snap and focus and narrow—until there is only the steady pounding inside of Spock’s head, the heave and shove and press of Kirk struggling underneath him, the pulse in Kirk’s neck as Spock squeezes the air from the passage of his throat.

Someone behind him shouts his name. _Spock!_

It is his mother.

Spock drops Kirk against the control board, and then he does not even attempt to push away the emotion that grips him at that moment.

\--

It is shame.


End file.
